


Pearly Heath

by Transistance



Series: Butterflies [8]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Butterflies, F/M, Forgiveness, Future Fic, Grim Reapers, Pigeons, Queerplatonic Relationships, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 12:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7618321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transistance/pseuds/Transistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything has its end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pearly Heath

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that's that! I have to admit that I didn't enjoy writing this series anywhere near as much as I enjoyed Incompatible, but hopefully it reads alright.

The demon raises its head and snarls, deep and reverberating, at the reaper who has come to eliminate it. It's a heavy-set creature, all squat limbs and square jaw, and doesn't seem to have bothered much with trying to blend in with the local populace. Even current English fashion doesn't incorporate _that_ many spines. Its eyes are red and streaky, its voice hoarse and unintelligible, and it hasn't eaten in months. No contract, no morals, no easy prey – the demon is desperate, and this desperation makes it dangerous. But its aggressor is experienced and almost as physically capable as the death goddess who trained him, and he lunges toward it with the sure-footed grace that has come to symbolise the era. The demon lashes out at the same time and the two meet, claws and a hacksaw both doing far too much damage. The demon's blood is black and ill. The reaper's wounds heal far more quickly. But nonetheless he can't match the raw savagery of the hellspawn, and a particularly nasty swipe to the head sends him reeling back– 

A flapping, thumping tapping against the window jerks the room's occupant from her immersion in the holographic report of the latest demon attack. For a moment she doesn't recognise the noise at all – it's out of place among the mechanical whirr of ceiling fans and periodic bleeping of the reader – but after a moment she places it and flicks off the headset, the virtual blood-bath replaced by the familiar walls of her office.

A pigeon flutters at the window, a letter bound around its leg. Grell only knows of one person in the world who still uses pigeons now that the messenger system is available. She smiles, goes to it; accepts the note and unfurls it to read. She can't remember the last time she saw the familiar and ancient art of ink on paper.

It says _Grell,_

_Your presence is requested immediately upstairs_  
Room 12, Floor 7  
Your manager has been informed of the situation. 

_William T. Spears,  
English Branch Coordinator._

That's a demand that she can't ignore. Grell doesn't bother to sign out; she simply grabs her coat from its near-permanent position on the back of her chair and heads out the door. Had she been to the seventh floor before she would jump straight up, but as it is, she hasn't. The elevators are fast enough, she supposes, but they aren't _immediate_. And she has been requested _immediately_.

The seventh floor, when she gets there, is clean and bleak and silent. It's arranged very differently to Collections' open-plan: a single straight corridor leads to a small conference room on the end, and each wall is lined with doors that Grell can only assume are individual offices. The floor is varnished wood; there's no light but for what streams in through the end room's windows. One must be open – there's a slight breeze. 

As there's nobody obvious to ask directions from and no way of telling who inhabits which room, she takes the first; knocks lightly and opens it without waiting for permission. It is indeed an office, and a nice one, too – it has the same strange lack of internal lighting as the corridor, but windows make up most of the wall behind the desk. It's pristine, although the man at the desk seems to be half asleep and a little dishevelled for that. He startles a little at the sight of her, squeezing his eyes shut a few times before actually looking at her.

“Can I help you?” he murmurs, and Grell feels compelled to lower her own voice to keep the peace.

“I'm looking for William T Spears' office,” she tells him, in an exaggerated stage-whisper. “I was told room 12, but they don't seem to have numbers.”

“Yeah, the room numbers only really exist to keep the post in order, y'know?” he mutters, then stands – slowly, as though the movement requires a lot of effort – before making his way out to stand with her in the corridor. “They're not actually visible anywhere... 12 is this one, here.” Without waiting for her reply he knocks on it, brisk and brief, and then retreats back to fade again into his own office. There's silence, and then the more than familiar voice beyond says, “Come in.”

Grell steps into a room that's essentially identical to the one she's just left; those same stretched windows, the same layout of room, the same near obscene orderliness of the papers. The only unique mark is the painstakingly maintained roost in the corner, and the inhabitant himself.

“It's lovely to see you,” she tells him, and he nods wordless agreement. It's been a while; their spontaneous house visits trailed off sometime after her surgery, and although he sometimes sends pigeons and she sometimes sends texts, it has become somehow easier and easier to fall victim to the excuse _I'm busy_. And it's true, always, on both sides; there are more deaths than ever even if her day-to-day life hadn't become exponentially more hectic as time has passed, and his position doesn't seem to offer free time. For all their downsides, it is easy to miss the quiet days in which the worst a reaper had to worry about was getting dismembered by a roaming demon.

William hasn't changed much over the years. He still wears that same suit – either kept immaculate or replaced with one in the exact style, which only now is beginning to look faintly out of place. Or it would if he were anyone else, or if he were mortal-side. Grell doesn't believe he has actually left the realm in a decade or two, not since the last time she dragged him out. Although physically he hasn't aged a day, his smile is tired. But there's something unfathomable in his eyes – she can't tell if it's absolute loss or inextricable joy.

“I got promoted,” he tells her, and the significance of that bounces right off.

“Congratulations, darling! It must be an exciting one for you to summon me all the way up here. Where are you headed, another three floors up?”

“You could say that, I suppose,” he says, pushing his chair back and himself to his feet. “Although it would perhaps be more prudent to focus less on the direction and more on the consequences of the thing.”

“Consequences?” She frowns at him now. “You're not going – abroad, or anything like that, are you? I don't think I could stand long-distance.”

William stares at her, and his own expression breaks cleanly into abject sympathy. “I won't be coming back, Grell.”

Everything stops. He's apologetic, pitying and elated all at once; she can see the childish wonder behind his eyes, the ancient desire not to upset her in the set of his mouth. The pigeons shuffle their feet. The breeze from his wide-open windows plays across her skin.

“...Oh,” she manages, eventually. “That kind of promotion.” He nods, slowly, watching her as closely as he can – worried, clearly, about how she'll take the news. It isn't quite sinking in, so her tongue forces out another question. “When do you go?”

“I think I've got about half an hour,” is the answer, amazingly nonchalant – like he's talking about going to a meeting, or heading out to lunch. “I'm sorry about how short notice this is - I've only just been told myself; they don't really hang around.”

“Half an hour,” she repeats, blankly. The words are sound but their meaning doesn't quite sink in. “And then you'll be–”

“ _Free_.” The word is imbued with almost religious gravitas, expelled as though he has never quite allowed himself to believe it before. “I'll be free, Grell – I'll be able to move on.” He crosses the distance between them as though it's nothing, takes her hands and shakes them, alight with anticipation. She hasn't seen him this energised since... since...?

Grell has never seen him so energised, not in four hundred years.

“You won't get to hear about the first reaping on Mars,” she says, half to herself. “You'll not see the conclusion to the argument about artificial souls, or – my child-”

“You're not even pregnant yet.” His voice drops suddenly colder, and as much as Grell regrets bringing up what remains a touchy subject, she feels the need to defend the point anyway.

“They're saying it might only be a matter of months – a year at most – I was hoping that you would...”

His eyes are pleading for her to stop, so she does. It has been a strangely sore point for some years now – he insists that he's against the idea because _it is so dangerous, Grell, nobody has managed it yet, you or the child will die_ but once or twice she's caught something in his tone that makes her think maybe he's afraid of the fact that she fully intends to bestow the majority of her affections on someone who doesn't exist yet; afraid of how drastic the change will be. Or maybe he's just inherently repelled by how much she's changed already to get this far. It doesn't matter now, either way. He won't be there to witness it. He'll be – somewhere else.

Somewhere better.

The last thing she wants to do is lose him; he's her best friend, her lover, her partner - but he has wanted this for so long, with everything he has, and she finds herself unable to resent him for that.

Grell kisses him on the mouth for the first time in their mutual second lifetime, and he reciprocates easily and immediately, pulling her close, holding her flush against himself. A mutual unspoken assertion makes it a chaste thing, all soft desperate lips and small breaths that push out loss even as affection is reconciled. He's warm, God, his skin is hot, he's going to die, _he's going to die-_

His fingers are on her neck, her cheeks, in her hair, and Will puts his head to hers and presses a single butterfly to her forehead. “You're crying,” he notes, all too concernedly, and she laughs. 

“Of course I'm – crying! This is what you've been working for all of these years and now – you're finally-” But it's all too sudden, all too immense. He's going to be gone and she'll be alone; even though she's always known he'll succeed long before she could she is shattered by its reality. It's come too soon, swung round too fast, and all the years she hasn't been beside him have abruptly been revealed wasted. 

His sympathy is momentous, evident in the slight draw in his face and gentility in his hands, soft, reassuring. “If I could take you with me-”

“I'm not ready to go.” She shakes her head violently, appalled by the notion. “Not yet – not now. Everything is changing. I want to watch it grow. I thought that you...” The end of that sentence is all snarled up. She'd thought, what, that William would endure his punishment forever? That when push came to shove he might have had a change of heart, not wanted with such fervency to terminate? But she does understand. At their cores all reapers share that same base desire for the freedom that was snatched from them too early, and although those like her manage to appreciate life anew it's still there, buried under the content and self-worth that she has built for herself. For William there has been no such safety net; for William the goal has remained steady from the day he died to the day he... is going to die. Going to be free.

It's beautiful, right and terrifying all at once – she owes it to him to pull herself together. “I'll tell everybody downstairs,” she declares. “We'll throw a party in your honour.”

His lips twitch in fond amusement, the slightest hint of ruefulness ruining the wonder of the expression. “I didn't know that there was anyone down there who still remembers me.”

“Of course there is! There's me, and...” Ronnie, emigrated to Boston half a century ago. Eric and Alan, cold in the ground since the Victorian era. The three juniors assigned to Will over the years are all in Management themselves, in three different branches; their peers and contemporaries from graduation onward have dispersed. Of course, that's only natural; everybody shifts offices as time goes on. Only Grell has consistently returned.

“Everybody loved you, Will,” she breathes, and he laughs.

“Only you loved me,” he replies, smiling, “But that was more than enough.”

So she smiles too, beaming through her distress even though she knows that he can see right through her, and his arms are strong and compassionate around her as she leans her face against his neck and just breathes, holding him close as though to imprint his memory against her skin. He's pressing kisses through her hair, hands splayed across her back, shielding her from everything that he can. His skin smells like old papers and black coffee; of glinting memories depicting those past days when they used to be inseparable. Everything he is stands here with her, contained within the embrace. And for a time it's okay; for a time she can pretend that he's not going anywhere, that his everything will remain her comfort long from now – that they're young again, juniors struggling to fit in, holding one another to prove the rest of the world wrong.

He takes her hand at the moment that the transcending being appears – the light is blinding and vicious, forcing Grell to flinch back, shield her eyes, curl in on herself. She can't see, can't hear anything but endless silence, can't feel anything but Will's fingers interlaced with her own. There's a second which stretches aeons, and then he squeezes her hand, remarkably gentle. Grell lets go of him in the same instant that he lets go of her.

And then he's gone. The light dims slowly, filtering away to reveal an empty desk, empty chairs, empty room. Her ears ring, expecting noise but receiving nothing. For a time she just sits there, blank and uncomprehending as the papers (half-done – who will finish them?) move in the breeze; as the pigeons coo and murmur from their perch upon the windowsill. No longer can there be any comfort in silence, any companionship on lonely nights. Today has been a finale, and it's over already.

Somebody will have to take care of the birds. There's two of them here at the moment, although she vaguely recalls William giving her the names of five. What do pigeons eat? Will they object to being moved? Do they understand that their caretaker is gone at all? They don't seem at all fazed by what has just occurred. Maybe pigeons can't see higher powers.

Perhaps it isn't fair to say that they don't care – they're distracted. Something in their roost has caught their attention in full, making their heads bob after it and causing the occasional tap of a beak against the ledge as they try to catch the item of interest. Grell moves closer, nigh somnambulant until she realises what it is.

It's a butterfly; ragged and torn, its wings ripped and abdomen bent. Nonetheless it flutters still, taps uselessly against the glass even though it can barely lift from the ground – tries to live even as it dies.

Grell crushes it against the glass with the heel of her hand.


End file.
